“Christian Truth-Claims Are Confirmed By Eyewitness Testimony—the Foremost Evidence in Courts of Law”

Eyewitness Testimony

In a court case, what kind of evidence is most condemning so far as establishing the probability of guilt? Although circumstantial evidence can play a significant role, by far the most important evidence a prosecutor can muster is eyewitness testimony. Now note this. The most compelling and irrefutable evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ comes from recorded eyewitnesses (legal testimony). The major events in Jesus’ life—His miracles, teachings, trial, death, and post-resurrection appearances—are recorded either by eyewitnesses to the events or by the companions of eyewitnesses. In a court case, the New Testament Gospels are primary source material, not second- or third-hand information and not oral tradition.

The authors of the New Testament were careful to note this eyewitness testimony in order to validate the authenticity of their writings. The Apostle Peter wrote, “For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we make known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty” (2 Peter 1:16). The Apostle John is even more specific: “What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we beheld and our hands handled concerning the Word of Life . . . what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also” (1 John 1:1-3, emphasis mine).

Nineteenth-century Harvard law professor Simon Greenleaf, considered one of the greatest American authorities on the use of evidence in legal procedures, wrote of the apostles’ integrity in his work The Testimony of the Evangelists: The Gospels Examined by the Rules of Evidence, Greenleaf concluded:

They had every possible motive to review carefully the grounds of their faith, and the evidence of the great facts and truths which they asserted; and these motives were pressed upon their attention with the most melancholy and terrific frequency. It was therefore impossible that they could have persisted in affirming the truths they have narrated, had not Jesus actually risen from the dead and had they not know of this fact as certainly as they knew any other fact. . . . And their writings show them to have been men of vigorous understandings. If then their testimony was not true, there was no possible motive for its fabrication.” (32)

If the case for Christianity were to go through the rigors of our court system and all the evidence available were presented, there is little doubt that the resurrection of Jesus Christ (the absolute proof of His deity—Romans 1:4) would be considered proven “to a moral certainty beyond reasonable doubt.” The historicity of Jesus’ resurrection is proven to the highest level of certainty possible.

On the basis of legal evidence alone, it is clear that Jesus Christ is who He claims to be: God incarnate, the risen Messiah, our Lord and Savior. Wise spiritual seekers should take this evidence seriously—it is literally a matter of life or (eternal) death.